The Bicameral Mind

[star ark]

I tried to search for this topic and was surprised it has not been brought up, please remove if it has and I am just beating a dead horse. From wikipedia:

"Bicameralism (the philosophy of "two-chamberedness") is a hypothesis in psychology that argues that the human mind once assumed a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys—a bicameral mind. The term was coined by Julian Jaynes, who presented the idea in his 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind,[1]wherein he made the case that a bicameral mentality was the normal and ubiquitous state of the human mind as recently as 3000 years ago. The hypothesis is generally not accepted by mainstream psychologists."

 

The argument is that originally humans heard orders in their heads and just followed them as if they were directions from the gods - we had no consciousness. It theorizes that we still talked, grieved, celebrated etc however it was not consciously. It gets too out there for me when it uses the old testament as an example of this "Bicameral Mind" still in effect and that the authors of the old testament still had no consciousness. The writing style of the old testament is very strange I admit, it has no emotion, no internal thought, no suffering, god was more like Zeus, the forces of natures etc, constantly people act on visions of god and everyone else believes every vision. He uses this quote about an ancient war where he claims the Romans had developed consciousness and they claimed to fight "Noble Automatas" - people who still operated under the Bicameral Mind and not sentience. He suggests mass population increase and the joining of groups of people all worshiping different gods was the catalyst for sentience. He claims a schizophrenic or religious person having a genuine vision of the divine to be the last remains of the Bicameral Mind. India definitely has the strange deities reputation and that would be another example of the Bicameral Mind. 

 

The theory is out there, but looking into it many people have been using his Bicameral Mind theory to come up with less out there theories.  It seems to give examples of the ego and the observer, but then the pure awareness is still not explained. I was loving the theory until the time frame of only 3000 years or so ago we actually developed consciousness. It does explain a hell of a lot about the thousands upon thousands of gods and why every ancient structure serves no real practical purpose other than worship.

 

[star ark]

7 minutes ago, Mighty Mouse said:

http://www.rational.org/pdf_files/originsjj.pdf

Thank you might mouse, you really did come and save the day!

[star ark]

This book is fantastic. It has very flowery prose so some rigid scientist logical types would immediately stop reading. The basic argument so far could be summarized as

"Right at this moment, you are not conscious of how you are sitting, of where your hands are placed, of how fast you are reading, though even as I mentioned these items, you were. And as you read, you are not conscious of the letters or even of the words or even of the syntax or the sentences and punctuation, but only of their meaning. As you listen to an address, phonemes disappear into words and words into sentences and sentences disappear into what they are trying to say, into meaning. To be conscious of the elements of speech is to destroy the intention of the speech. For in speaking or writing we are not really conscious of what we are actually doing at the time. Consciousness functions in the decision as to what to say, how we are to say it, and when we say it, but then the orderly and accomplished succession of phonemes or of written letters is somehow done for us."

or

"Most people will identify with
a struggling worm. But as every boy who has baited a fish hook
knows, if a worm is cut in two, the front half with its primitive
brain seems not to mind as much as the back half, which writhes
in 'agony'.
 But surely if the worm felt pain as we do, surely it
would be the part with the brain that would do the agonizing.
The agony of the tail end is our agony, not the worm's; its
writhing is a mechanical release phenomenon"

Still not convinced the old testament was written by bicameral minds yet . Lack of emotion in old testament could simply be due to writing still being so primitive or perhaps out of respect for the lessons it contains. 

[snowleopard]

 

[star ark]

4:50 wow

We have some sort of instinctive awareness and then a different form of awareness is aware of that instinctive awareness and finally logic or consciousness is aware of the awareness of the instinctive awareness. So it could be argued that we do know things with that instinctive awareness just via instinct alone and then our awareness of the instinct fools itself into thinking it didn't know the answer until it became aware of the instinctive awareness. 

I'm juggling the actual book and now other videos on the Bicameral mind. It seems to come down to "I am therefor I think"

 

[starsofclay]

have you seen Westworld? It's an amazing show which touches on this subject

[Faceless]

Lol There’s thought therefore I am 

[star ark]

The author needs to argue that language and even human civilization itself did not require self reflection to be created. Otherwise his timeline of around 3000 years ago doesn't work. He uses many examples to prove consciousness is the last in the timeline of reactivity, with instinctive pattern recognition first and then reasoning second. What is the next symbol ?

x  o  x  o  x  o  x  o  x  ?

When then answer came to you how did it arrive at that answer? Did you use reasoning? Or did an instinctive pattern recognition system inherent to you figure it out, then in hindsight it felt like you "reasoned" the answer and then in hindsight you are conscious of this chain of events?

or

You need to determine which of 2 objects is heavier. You pick them up. You don't use reasoning or consciousness for this task. You are conscious of the sensations involved, the tangible qualities of the items in hand, the appearance of the items, maybe scent, they may be very expensive items - you could be conscious of nervousness - but you are not conscious of the mechanism that identifies the heavier object. Your nervous system and that inherent system in all of us gives us the answer, reasoning is not involved in a single step problem and consciousness does nothing. Consciousness never does anything. Reasoning is just the inherent pattern recognition in hindsight. So problems can be solved without consciousness.